Mary Pickford: A Life on Film (1997)

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Documentary on the life of actress Mary Pickford (1892-1979), who rose from obscure poverty in Canada, to become a film icon, one of the worlds most famous people, and the first American women to earn more then a million dollars in a single year. She really was a pioneer and the more that you learn about her the more you respect her. She acted, wrote, directed, co-founded and to a large extent ran a major Hollywood studio (United Artists), all this as a women scarsly out of the Victorian era. Mary’s personal life however proved a sharp contrast to her career. It was during the era of her greatest success that she lost her mother, and two younger siblings, not to mention her first and second husbands (the later of which, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., was by far the most famous, and the man with whom she will always be most associated). In the early 1930's her acting career ground to an unwanted halt, as she was now far to old to be at all convincing in the child roles that made her a smash, however some of this dissatisfaction was offset by the fact that she had such a successful and loving relationship with her third husband, actor turned band leader Charles "Buddy" Rogers, with whom she was married for Forty-two years. Mary Pickford is a women worth learning about.